"You don't last 20 years if you are a dickhead"

PL celebrates the career of Peter Siddle the cricketer's cricketer

“You don’t last 20 years if you are a dickhead,” Tim Paine says as he works into his testimony about the qualities of Peter Siddle.

A cricketer’s cricketer. Low maintenance, highly professional, easygoing and determined to win. Run into a headwind all day if you asked him. Top of off. Top of off. And when the Australian summer is done he’d pack his beanie into a small port and head to England to do it all over again. Eve of every summer he’s standing there, blowing warmth into his hands, rolling the arm over, anticipating the first match. Smiling. Always smiling.

“There are a lot of cricketers with a high skill level, but Sidds was the full package,” Paine continued. “He’s an unbelievable bowler, he’s an unbelievable bloke, he’s a brilliant team mate, he makes teams better, he makes players better, he makes people better, he makes the organisation better.”

Siddle transitioned to Tasmania when Covid had hit. It was a strange time, Victoria had a roster heavy with veterans, Pete spent the first weeks in a motel room next to the airport outside Hobart. TV crew interviewed him on the balcony while they aimed a camera up from the road. It was no surprise to hear Paine say that when things went wrong for him around this time that Siddle was there for him. In the next room when he did that press conference. Moved in when things were really rough. They’d known each other since they were teenagers dreaming of the big time. Kept a close eye on his old mate.

“To have that sort of longevity is a very rare thing and you have to have a lot going for you and he does,” Paine says. “He was a great performer anywhere in the world, he was reliable, durable - and that’s the other thing with his longevity – you have got to be a special cricketer and a special person to last as long as he lasted. Your body has to hold up but you have to adapt to different coaches, different team mates, different teams and different formats. His ability to adapt and make teams and groups better is as impressive as the number of wickets he’s taken.”

Peter Siddle took his 792nd first-class wicket with the final ball of Victoria’s Sheffield Shield summer. Got them over the line one last time. The 40-year-old was then acknowledged with a guard of honour formed by the South Australians and his teammates in front of a handful of spectators. A video of the moment captures him handing over the match ball to a young fan. He figured “he’d like the ball more than me, it was just going to hang around my place”.

Having given up the match ball, he then doled out all his cricket gear to Chris Rogers brother who has a club final in Perth this weekend. There’d been speeches during the week, Siddle had played with almost all the coaching staff so they’d had a bit to say, and his teammates had grown up watching him play for Australia before joining him in the state sheds. He kept the shirt he wore on the last day.

Ollie Peake, who was making his debut in the match against Western Australia, hadn’t been born when Siddle had made his in an ODI for Victoria over there in 2005.